So Travel Back Down That Road
by WhatIt'sLikeToStandOutside
Summary: AU - Rose dreams about the Doctor, but she wakes up and it's never real. Her mum thinks she's crazy. All Rose wants to do is be able to travel with her Doctor forever. (Trigger warning: suicide)


**A/N: My first Doctor Who fic! This was written at like 11:30 at night, so please don't judge me if it's the weirdest concept ever. Slightly inspired by the song "Just a Dream" by Nelly.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or it's characters or anything of the sort. Also, I posted this on tumblr, so if anyone is reading this who read it on tumblr, I didn't steal it.**

**TRIGGER WARNING: suicide**

"They all think I'm crazy, Mickey," I told him, "They keep telling me it's just a dream, but it's every night! It's always the same; it's always him and me in that big, blue, time machine, seeing the stars."

"But it's not real, is it?" Mickey confirmed, slinging an arm around my shoulders, "when you wake up in the morning you're Rose Tyler again, aren't you? You work in a shop."

"Yeah, but Mickey," I explained, "I'm Rose Tyler with the Doctor, too. I am Rose Tyler and I used to work in a shop and I go traveling with him and I save the universe."

"C'mon, Rose, you can barely work a cash register, you can't save the world!" he laughed. He didn't get it. No one did.

"I have to get back to work," I lied, "Call you tonight, okay?" I gave him a quick kiss, and started to walk away.

"Hey, don't worry about this!" Mickey called, "The dreams will go away soon enough!" I waved at him. I didn't bother to tell him that I didn't want them to.

I told people less and less about my dreams. They were so real that at first I thought they were. There was a man called the doctor, and he had two different faces. That's the part that usually throws people. The thing is, he isn't a man, but he looks like one. He's an alien, a Time Lord, and he can cheat death by changing into another person. And I loved him.

It was like I was living two separate lives in my head. When I was asleep, I was Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth, but when I was awake, I was nothing. I wasn't important. Then again, Donna Noble wasn't important.

She was in my dreams sometimes. At least, she used to be. I was trapped for a while. I lived in a parallel universe with my mum and Mickey and my dad.

My dad was alive in that universe. I met him and talked to him and he was wonderful. But I had to get back to the Doctor. My Doctor. I couldn't leave him. I loved him.

That's around when I first started telling people about my dreams, about the Doctor. No one understood my need to get back to him, the pain that I felt not being with him. He was my Doctor and he had to need me just as much as I needed him. I would spend my lunch breaks at the library in town, trying to find as much information as I could, trying to figure out how to get back, jump through parallel universes, communicate with parallel universes. I never found anything. My mum tried to indulge me at first. She thought the dreams were harmless fun, just a little imagination to relieve my subconscious desires. Then she realized that I couldn't stop thinking about him and talking about him. It was a relief having Mum know. I didn't have to keep it a secret antmore, and maybe she could help. But my mum started to think I was going mad. She must have sent me to four different psychologists. I started to realize that the more time I spent with them, the more I took those little white pills that they gave me, the less I saw him. My Doctor. I couldn't let him go.

I started to keep quiet. I hid the pills. I started to travel back to my parallel universe with my dad and my baby brother Tony. I researched in the libraries in their world, but their world was the same as mine, and I found nothing. I was so frustrated. This couldn't be happening. I needed to get back to the Doctor more than I needed anything.

That's when I told Mickey. I didn't tell Mickey that I was in love with the Doctor. I didn't tell Mickey that we weren't together in my dreams. I couldn't tell him. He'd proposed. I couldn't tell Mickey that I was in love with a man that wasn't him. I love Mickey, but not the way I loved the Doctor. I loved the Doctor in a way that hurt, that touched me in every fiber of my being. I couldn't tell Mickey that.

Mickey thought it was just harmless fun, too, just like Mum. I didn't try to explain anything to him. I told him what was going on, but that was it. He never thought I was in too deep. That's because he never knew how deep I was in.

I was at my house with one night and a woman came to the door. She wanted to help me. She knew all about time travelling, and she and her crew had some theories that they could try. All of them wanted to help me find the Doctor.

My mum and Mickey thought I was getting better. They thought that's why my spirits lifted. They had no idea that I was about to see the Doctor again.

I was smarter than them, the woman and her team. I figured it all out the second they started explaining. I never thought I was good at anything, and here I was. It was because of the Doctor, because of everything he taught me. With all of us together, I was going to get through to see him again. I didn't even notice when the stars started going out.

Mum started noticing again when I found out about the stars. I was scared, more terrified than I'd ever been of anything. I was terrified that I wouldn't get back in time. The pain I felt went beyond my dreams. Occasionally I'd start thinking about it at work, and I'd start feeling the pain, and I'd start having panic attacks. That's when my mum found out about the medicine. She went home and found them in the drawer in my bedside table. She didn't know what to do. I haven't talked to her much since. She thinks I'm mad. They all do, everyone but Mickey.

When I met Donna for the first time, she took a lot of work. It was a week of jumping back and forth into her universe to get her to understand and to remember the Doctor. I needed to disintegrate her universe, though; I needed to in order to get to the Doctor's, to mine. When I did that, I was with him again. And then he was shot by a dalek. I woke up into my mum's world as he was dying in my arms.

I woke up and all I wanted was to go back to sleep. My mom caught me grabbing a handful of the pills, and she took me to the hospital. She told them to make me better. The doctors wouldn't let me go to sleep that night. I had to go to sleep. I had to get back there. I couldn't let my Doctor die, not now, not when I was so close. They restrained me, and dripped medicine in my arm. I didn't go to sleep that night.

The next night they had no choice but to let me go to sleep – it wasn't healthy for me to stay up for 48 hours straight. I slept and I saw the Doctor and he lived. He didn't even need to regenerate. He was alive. He was blurry. The world was hard to make out and things started skipping like if you hit the button to move to the next chapter on a movie. I felt left out. I was with my Doctor, but I wasn't. He was still in love with me, but he'd moved on. And I could barely communicate because I didn't have control over my random blackouts.

I woke up with a decision. The Doctor had given me a choice. There was another Doctor, his clone. Donna created him, and he was human. If I wanted, I could spend the rest of my life with him. Donna had given us the key to being able to travel again, through time and space, the Doctor and Rose, Defenders of the Earth, in the TARDIS. It would be perfect again. We could grow old together.

I wanted it. I wanted that life more than I wanted to breathe. It hurt in my chest thinking about it, but a good hurt. I felt amazing. But I couldn't handle a life like that only being my nights. I needed that to be my life all the time.

They let me out of the hospital and I went back to work and I was Rose Tyler Who Worked in a Shop again. I didn't want to be her. I tried to talk to Mickey about it, but I couldn't tell him nearly as much as I needed to.

"The dreams will go away soon enough!" He called. I looked over my shoulder at him. He didn't understand, and I could never make him understand that I didn't want them to stop. I wanted to be with this new human Doctor forever. I needed to.

I still had some of the pills. I hadn't thought about it since the stars went out, but I could go back forever. I didn't have to live two different lives anymore. I could go and be with my dad and baby Tony and a mum who understood.

I pulled the pills out of my purse. I had ten minutes before I had to get back from my lunch break. I had ten minutes to decide to never have a lunch break again, to travel with the Doctor forever.

It wouldn't just be a dream.

It was real. And it was mine.

I poured fifteen pills onto my hand. I didn't know how many would be enough, but I thought fifteen might do the trick.

I would be Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth. I wouldn't work in a shop.

I shoved them in my mouth and rolled them around, trying to remember if I had a water bottle in my bag. I was too frightened to look.

I would be with him again, my Doctor. The Doctor and Rose in the TARDIS.

I got my water bottle out of my purse and I shoved water in my mouth.

Everything would be better with the Doctor. He made people better.

I swallowed.

This wasn't just a dream, it was real.

I pulled my lover to me and kissed him as I faded from my mum's world for the last time.

I would never be just a dream again.


End file.
